More than 70 people attended the Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026 Lancaster Prison Board meeting to ask the county sheriff to stop working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Jordan Wilkie / WITF News
ICE proposed “30-day surge.” Lancaster, York law enforcement were uninterested.
“Less is more,” said one local police chief about working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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Jordan Wilkie/WITF
Jordan Wilkie / WITF News
More than 70 people attended the Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026 Lancaster Prison Board meeting to ask the county sheriff to stop working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
At the end of October, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement staffer emailed eight of its partner law enforcement agencies in Lancaster and York counties to coordinate federal immigration removal operations. Those partnerships allow local law enforcement officers certain authority to cooperate with federal immigration.
“ICE is looking to conduct a 30-day surge in your area,” wrote Joseph Dunn, assistant field office director out of ICE’s Philadelphia office. “Exact dates have not been set but we are looking to start before the end of the year. We would be able to surge additional ICE officers to work with your officers during a 30 day period. Let me know if this is something you can support.”
The people and agencies who received the email include sheriffs for Franklin and Lancaster counties, a Lancaster county detective working with the district attorney, a Susquehanna Regional Police detective, and chiefs for the Northwest Regional Police Department and the Manheim, West York and Quarryville boroughs. ICE also included Armstrong County’s Manor Township police in its surge email, apparently mistaking the agency with the Manor Township in Lancaster County which is not part of an immigration enforcement partnership.
WITF received a copy of the email from Quarryville Borough under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know-Law governing access to public records.
WITF asked each of the law enforcement agencies about the request. The five agencies who responded said ICE never followed up. No surge has taken place to date, according to statements from the Manheim Borough, Northwest Regional Police Department and West York Borough chiefs of police, a spokesperson for the Lancaster County district attorney, and Quarryville’s Director of Public Safety. Manheim Borough and Northwest Regional Police Department chiefs also said either limited capacity or need were the reasons they did not engage with ICE’s surge request. The other agencies did not respond.
ICE said its lawyers are working on a response, but none was provided by the time of publication.
Matthew Millsaps, West York Borough’s Chief of Police and Public Safety, said he was not interested in partnering with ICE on a surge because the 16 officers in his department “are able to ensure the safety of our culturally diverse community.”
“Sure, we can use a hand every now and then, but I don’t need a ‘surge’ coming into West York to keep our residents safe,” Millsaps wrote to WITF. “[In] fact, quite the contrary – as with anything, ‘less is more.’”
At the time of ICE’s October email, ICE and Customs and Border Patrol agents were in the middle of its 2-month “Midway Blitz” operation in Chicago, which ended in mid-November. Both agencies are part of the federal Department of Homeland Security.
DHS was also gearing up for an immigration crackdown in Charlotte, North Carolina, arresting over 250 people in November.
In December, DHS launched major operations in Minneapolis and New Orleans. Each of these other DHS targets are major cities with Democratic voter bases. That’s starkly different from Lancaster County, which favored Trump by 16 percentage points in the 2024 election, and York County, which favored Trump by 25 percentage points. Both counties do have cities that lean Democratic, including neighborhoods in West York Borough.
In late January, Governor Josh Shapiro said on TV show The View that his office was preparing for increased ICE presence in the state.
“We understand that this is a risk,” Shapiro said. “Maybe not just in Philly, but Pittsburgh, Lancaster, other communities across Pennsylvania, we’ve heard similar rumors.”
ICE has not announced a Pennsylvania-specific operation as they have in other states.
Partnering with ICE, or not
Months before ICE sent the email to Quarryville, the borough’s chief of police sent a letter to ICE, which was also released as part of WITF’s records request. On June 15, 2025, then Chief Erick Stone, wrote to ICE saying he had been in touch with their Enforcement and Removal Office field office director and a local 287(g) program manager. He sought to include Quarryville Borough Police in ICE’s 287(g) program. He also included a signed Memorandum of Agreement.
Stone sought to work with ICE under the “Task Force” model, which uses local officers as a force multiplier for federal immigration enforcement operations.
Under President Barack Obama, ICE ended the task force and hybrid 287(g) programs after a series of lawsuits alleged the program contributed to racial profiling, though the administration kept partnerships that allowed ICE to pick people up from local jails.
But under President Trump, ICE reinstated it.
Stone sought to train ten law enforcement officers to work with ICE, according to his letter.
“The Task Force Model will allow us to enter into a Memorandum of Agreement which will enable my agency to assist in the identification and apprehension of illegal aliens who may pose a risk to public safety in Quarryville and all of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,” Stone wrote.
But according to Quarryville’s new Director of Public Safety John Slauch, their police department “doesn’t have 10 Officers and never did,” he wrote in an email to WITF. “Of the 5 they did have in June, no one received any training from or with ICE.”
By the time ICE sent that late October email to the local law enforcement agencies including Quarryville, Chief Stone had been fired by the borough earlier in the month. As reported by LNP | LancasterOnline, Quarryville’s council did not give a reason for the move.
On Nov. 24, Slauch wrote to ICE that Stone “was not authorized to enter into any agreement with ICE and did so without Borough Council’s knowledge.” LNP | LancasterOnline first reported on Quarryville Borough withdrawing from the 287(g) agreement and on the Borough’s position that former Chief of Police Eric Stone entered into the program without the permission or knowledge of the Borough Council.
Slauch followed up on Feb. 12, 2026 with an official letter to ICE to withdraw Quarryville from the 287(g) program, reiterating his stance that the borough should never have been considered a participant. Slauch returned to ICE the credential it issued to one officer whose name is redacted in the record, and noted he did not have possession of Stone’s credential.
Five days later, in an unsigned statement made on the borough’s Facebook page, the borough wrote it did not have enough policing capacity to dedicate resources to partnering with ICE.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to add further clarity to information that police for Manor Township in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, are participating in ICE’s 287(g) program, but Manor Township police in Lancaster County are not.
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